Bindweed. (Photograph: Colin Wootton)

Richard Fonge writes:

The lengthy spell of hot weather continues, resulting in one of the earliest harvests ever, with the strong possibility of completion by the end of the month, a time when usually a start would be made. These tinder dry conditions across our countryside are a fire hazard, and for our farmers combining ripe corn with the dust it produces, they have to be extra vigilant. One spark can set alight not only the combine but the crop itself that it is cutting. This has happened already this year in parts of the country.

There are various plants that grow on our land that are deadly poisonous to animals. Ragwort is the most prominent one and spreading profusely across all the HS2 sites where the land has been left vacant. A great pollinator but can be fatal to livestock when eaten if cut and dried in the form of hay. Fatal to dogs if they ingest. St John’s Wort and Hemlock are two other plants that are fatal if eaten, but like Ragwort livestock usually avoid eating when green. I have seen a cow treated for St John’s wort poisoning, where the white pigmentation of her skin lifted off and also caused severe liver damage resulting in death. A plant called the thorn apple, another poisonous one, sometimes grown in our gardens but mostly found on the banks of our large rubbish tips, suddenly appeared in a field of potatoes of mine. The seeds we had believed had been carried by seagulls from a large waste tip not far away and deposited by them as they had followed the plough. The thorn apple has large pods which when ripe burst open spreading thousands of seeds. In this case a selective herbicide soon solved the problem, without harming the potato crop.

The grass verges along our lanes are only cut once a year in July, and it is noticeable how much bindweed with its white flowers there are along our lanes. When the verges were cut in May and July it didn’t get a chance to grow. Wherever it grows it strangles all other plants, so never let it in your garden or allotment.

I am not of the thinking of looking back with nostalgia of harvests past, because we are inclined to only remember the better times and not the frustrations of unreliable machinery and the hard physical work entailed in getting in the harvest, compared to today with our sophisticated machinery and ease of labour. But the end result is the same and should be celebrated, because the harvest of any crop, whether grown in field, allotment, greenhouse or garden puts food on our tables.

Richard Fonge.

Silage bale wrapped in plastic. Photo: Colin Wootton

Richard Fonge writes:

The rain and showers of the early part of June, have been very welcome for all the crops and grassland. With the corn now in ear, the rain helps to swell the grain, so making a plumper fruit. This is also applicable to all our garden and allotment fruits and vegetables. The outcome will hopefully will be a good harvest which we can celebrate as a village in September on the Castle Green.

The young yearling sheep off the Helmdon road have now been sheared. Sheep are sheared once a year, starting in mid May or when the weather is warm and dry enough. The fleece needs removing for health reasons and for the sheep’s comfort. A full fleece has grown again by winter time. Lanolin secreted from the sebaceous glands of the sheep needs to have risen to make an easy shearing of the sheep. The majority of the shearers come over from New Zealand for the season, working in gangs across the country. Wool today is of little value. The price not covering the cost hardly of removal. It was of course wool that brought great wealth to the Cotswolds in particular, but also our area of Northants, for example the Althorp estate owned by the Spencer family with their connection to the Washingtons. The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnet is a great story of fifteenth century Cotswolds, and her later book about Sulgrave Manor and the Washingtons in Queen Mary’s reign entitled “Stars of Fortune” a must read.

June was once the start of haymaking, a very busy weather dependent task. Today very little hay is made with grass being conserved as silage or haylage for winter stock feed. Both these forms of conservation require wrapping the grass in plastic in bales of up to 500 kilos. The difference in making is that the grass is dried out more for haylage and preferred by the horse people. For farmers with large numbers of stock the grass is mown, harvested by a forage harvester which chops it up finely and then clamped and sealed.

On the walk along the Stuchbury boundary the second field called Sulgrave ground is growing a fantastic crop of wheat, the next Painters a field of HS2 soil. Both are around 50 acres in size, and having farmed them both it delights me to see such a crop and saddens me to see such vandalism of a good field.

Richard Fonge

Sheep shearing in Sulgrave. May 1966. Photograph: Colin Wootton

Richard Fonge writes:

The persistent cold northerly winds and lack of rain have had a severe impact on spring grown crops and grass growth, and this can be seen in our own gardens. Late frosts will have had an effect on blossoms and any emerging potatoes if they haven’t been covered up.

The first two weeks of May I believe sees the countryside at its best (ignoring what is happening to the west of Sulgrave). The fresh light greens of the hedgerows and trees, along with the many blossoms, in particular the horse chestnut tree and the may blossom stand out. Not forgetting the Madam’s Close buttercups.

The winter wheat plant up the concrete road and on the Stuchbury footpath along with the winter barley off Park lane and oilseed rape up the Moreton Road, were well established last autumn and have a healthy look after nitrogen fertiliser feed. If the Middle East conflict is not settled soon and nitrogen fertiliser becomes scarce, there will be serious implications for our food security.

No market town has changed more than Banbury. Forty years ago the M40 was completed, bringing much more industry to a town which had the largest livestock market in Europe, four grain and cattle feed merchants and at least four agricultural engineers as I recall. But agriculture, farming was also changing rapidly with the advancement of technology and in particular machinery. The numbers of farmers declined as small acreages became uneconomical to run, and we saw the ever expanding growth of contract farming. An agreement between a farmer and another farmer whereby one contacts out to the other at an agreed price to grow his crops. This made optimum use of expensive machinery and reduced the numbers working on the land. So sadly today that strong agriculture connection is nowhere to be seen in the town.

The nearest livestock markets are at Thame and Stoneleigh (Rugby Market) and Worcester. Today’s marketing is mainly in the case of grain done over the phone with an agent. Whilst some stock goes through the live auction, most is sold through a marketing group, direct to abattoir or with a supermarket contract.

Lastly this time of year is a worrying for shepherds. Ewes have a full fleece and can get cast on their backs, and if not found in time will die from the build up of gasses pressing on the diaphragm. The shearing of sheep usually starts in late May, when the oils have risen after a warm spell.

Richard Fonge

As advertised in the Village Newsletter.

Photographs of the Scarecrows on the next page.

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Richard Fonge writes:

We are experiencing a true blackthorn winter in the first part of April, with night frosts and a chill wind most of the time. The blackthorn blossom in our hedges lasts well into late April, soon to be followed by the whitethorn (May blossom). These two thorns were the predominant hedge plants to keep stock in their rightful fields in the past, before stock netting and barb wire were available to back fence the field as you see now in most pastures.

How good it is to see the fields once again stocked with cattle, and ewes and lambs after a winters break. Turning cattle out after a winter in sheds is always a welcome sight as they charge round, kicking their heels in the air before settling down to graze. To me it is the same as seeing the first swallow. Spring has arrived! As you go up the Moreton Rd have you ever wondered what the large red box in the field opposite the Bungalow is? It’s a lamb creep feeder. Lambs mostly live off their mothers milk, but by putting a high protein feed in this box that lambs can access but not the ewes, it helps their growth and takes the pressure off the reliance of milk. 

All crops sown last autumn look healthy and have responded to their first application of nitrogen fertiliser and will have had a fungicide spray applied to protect the leaf from the many diseases that affect the leaf. The greener the leaf the better photosynthesis can take place to produce a bold healthy fruit of good quality at harvest time. The oilseed rape in particular has come through the winter well, mainly I suspect because of good germination creating a denser ground covering, making the crop less susceptible to pigeon damage.

Today to scare birds off crops gas bangers are used, not scarecrows as of old. The scarecrow was mainly used to frighten the rook and pigeon. By placing a scarecrow or two made up of old clothing over a frame, it was felt it would scare off the birds. In the case of the pigeon decoys can be placed for shooting purposes. Of the corvid family the rook can do good as well as harm. They are a tight knit family bird living in their rookerys. They need pasture to live off, and can do much good by eating the leatherjackets and wireworm that can attack the roots of new sown crops. The leatherjacket is the larva of the crane fly, more prevalent in wet times. The wireworm the larva of the click beetle, usually active in a crop following grass.

We miss I think the succinct and pithy retorts of old country folk: A woodsman was turned away from a tree planting job, but asked a year later to weed them, which he refused.

Reply to agent: “It’s like this when my missus gives me rhubarb I likes a bit of custard too”

Richard Fonge

Chairman’s Report Sulgrave Parish Council. 2025-2026.

Lambs on the Stuchbury path. Photo: Colin Wootton

Richard Fonge writes:

Now in mid March the weather is changing to being more spring like. Lambs will soon be in the fields across to Weston and up the Moreton road. This is a good time therefore to ask all dog owners to remember to keep their dogs on leads when walking the footpaths through fields. The worrying of livestock is on the increase costing the industry an estimated £2million a year on official figures. That is without the cruelty and suffering. The young sheep on the Stuchbury footpath are ewe lambs. They are twelve months old and will be bred from this autumn, lambing next spring.

Age brings nostalgia, and looking back over a farming career and an involvement in rural life, the memories are good. As a child and teenager farming was still very labour intensive and physical. It wasn’t until the mid sixties that we saw the rapid mechanisation of agriculture. This not only brought specialisation to individual farms, but the demise of the smallholder and the less need for farm workers. This in turn led to a change in the make up of our villages, with many leaving the rural life to one of a more urban life in our local towns and beyond.

Surnames back then were synonymous with certain villages. Sulgrave had many families called Wootton, Cleaver and Hirons. Greatworth or Grit’worth as it was pronounced had families called Carpenter, Barrett and Isham to the fore.

Today we forget or don’t realise how hard life was back in the fifties with the pig and allotment vital to the living of the household as it had always had been to the rural worker. The allotment grew the vegetables and the pig the meat. The pig was salted down and the bacon sliced off as required, usually about 80% fat, which was not a problem as the work was physical and the day started with a walk or cycle ride. Many were still living off the land and not the supermarket as of today.

True conversation in Grit’worth shop. Ernie Isham (always known as neighbour) was patiently waiting to be served is asked by shopkeeper Ernest Barratt If he has planted his broad beans. Reply: “Yes. and the b*****s will be up before I get my tobacco”.

Richard Fonge.

Aconites on the Moreton Road. Photograph: Colin Wootton

Richard Fonge writes:

The rain continues therefore making the ground sodden. However the winter corn and oilseed rape still looks healthy, in particular the wheat plant up the concrete road. These crops will soon be needing nitrogen to boost growth when ground conditions allow. Nitrogen needs to be applied in at least two applications.

Agriculture education and sharing knowledge with a wider population has always been very close to my heart Those wishing to make a career in the industry have a wide choice, whether it’s a course at your local college such as Moulton in Northamptonshire or a degree course at one of our universities. A prerequisite in both cases is to gain some practical experience if possible beforehand. New entrants bring fresh ideas to the industry, where there are plenty of opportunities for those wanting an outdoor life, and the great satisfaction of seeing the fruits of your labour in the harvesting and growing of the crop or the raising of livestock.

The aconites up the Moreton road have been exceptional this year and with the snowdrops now out and daffodils soon to bloom, spring seems not far away, with lambs soon to be seen also.

Some forty years ago, I had the pleasure to get to know a retired farmer in his nineties. Roly was a great character who had started with three cows grazing the grass verges, milking them by hand and then selling the milk in the village, this was in 1912. He was able by renting a field or two build his business slowly to the point he could rent in 1927 a 250 acre farm with an extensive milk round in Coventry. At the age of a hundred he entered the Guinness book of records as Britain’s oldest driver. On one occasion he was having breakfast when the district nurse arrived to dress a leg sore and ticked him off for eating egg, bacon, fried bread and tomato. His reply: This has been my breakfast all my life and I am now 96, along with a good tot of whiskey at bedtime! No more was said.

Richard Fonge.